PH issues in my Aerograden

Ditch the pH down. I've tried that, lemon juice and neither of them worked well for me. I suggest grabbing some concentrated H3PO4. It's very slow to loose its strength, and acts as a self buffer so that the pH doesn't really jump around too much. Also, you only need very little to bring the pH down to 5.5, so a small bottle will last a bit.

Mike: are you changing your nutes weekly and giving your reservoir a good scurbbing? It sounds like you might possibly have and algae bloom going on in your tank and the white stuff you described might be mold or mildew. Take a whiff of the smell in your tank too. If it smells like polluted water that pretty much seals it. I've had problems with both until I put covers on my planting cages, switched to black plastic drip irrigation hose to your air stone and sealed off the unused planting holes. The paper covers from A/G are adequate but the plastic net pot covers form your local hydro store are even better. Light getting into your reservoir can do this. I hope this helps. HSA

unfortunatly my PH issues along with a mini heatwave killed my girl off
but i learned alot an i'm gettin ready to put together my own hydro setup in a couple of days, get a new fan for my grow closet an pickup some 55 watt cfls

Originally Posted by BeavTek

Ditch the pH down. I've tried that, lemon juice and neither of them worked well for me. I suggest grabbing some concentrated H3PO4. It's very slow to loose its strength, and acts as a self buffer so that the pH doesn't really jump around too much. Also, you only need very little to bring the pH down to 5.5, so a small bottle will last a bit.

that H3PO3 stuff is something i'm gonna have to look into

Originally Posted by HSA

Mike: are you changing your nutes weekly and giving your reservoir a good scurbbing? It sounds like you might possibly have and algae bloom going on in your tank and the white stuff you described might be mold or mildew. Take a whiff of the smell in your tank too. If it smells like polluted water that pretty much seals it. I've had problems with both until I put covers on my planting cages, switched to black plastic drip irrigation hose to your air stone and sealed off the unused planting holes. The paper covers from A/G are adequate but the plastic net pot covers form your local hydro store are even better. Light getting into your reservoir can do this. I hope this helps. HSA

i did all the nute changes and scrubbing but theres no way for me to get to the inside of the drip system so i guess i'll just have to use some hydrogen peroxide to clean the whole thing out an put together some sorta cover for the thing cause that aerograden has all sorts of places for light to leak in

sounds like salt build up from too much synthetic nutes.

Originally Posted by superstoner1

sounds like salt build up from too much synthetic nutes.

i dont know about that, i only use organic nutes

From the white deposits and freefalling PH it sounds like a hard water issue.
It does a great job of resisting ph changes until the buffering capacity is used up and then the Ph tends to drop like a stone without warning.

Had the same prob using fox farm nutes in my 2-3600w aero rooms. Here's what I did. First, I stopped using fox farm nutes. Not suitable for aero. I hope you didn't buy too much. Only their MKP heavy tri-pack is ok for aero. My water is very soft (under 100ppm) so I know this was not the problem. Did you notice that the foxfarm nutes don't like to be heavily aerated, tend to stay milky brownish/yellow when agitated in the res of a dwc bubbler? I noticed this and I also noticed the sediment that never dissolves ( it is quite excessive ) in the big bloom container ( read big shit for aero systems, cause that is actually what it is mostly made of). Once I changed over to good old GH micro/bloom Lucas ratio, I started to get about 50% more yield and better taste. The fox farm gave me a flavor that was, well...like crap. It might work good for soil, even passive systems. Definitely not for aero or dwc. The high aeration of aero combined with guanos (shit!) give anaerobic bacteria the upper hand. This negative (anaerobic) bio load is what drops your ph. Ask any wastewater treatment plant operator and he will tell you the same.If you use any guano whatsoever in an aeroponic system you essentially turn focus from being a gardener and you instead become a wastewater treatment plant operator.Think about it...

Anaerobic bacteria would be hard pushed to survive in a well aerated system (anaerobic = without oxygen). A healthy colony of aerobic bacteria produces a lot of acidic waste (carbonic acid etc) which will cause a steady drop in ph. The symptoms point to hard water being the cause because the PH-down has a limited effect until it reaches the tipping point where the PH plummets.

most of the time its around 6.5 no matter how much ph down i use and when i can get it to drop it plummets as low as 3.25